1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to electronic document security and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for securing transfer of secure content to a destination.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the Internet age, it is imperative to safeguard information from unauthorized viewers. However, encryption is not a guarantee that secure content is safe. Even with the plethora of security measures available, secure content is often accidentally transferred to non-secure or less secure destinations. Users accidentally fail to comprehend the dilution of security that is facilitated when information present within a confidential document is transited to an unsecure document or application. For example, a user may enter a password in order to open a secure source document, thereby authenticating the user. The user may then copy some content from the source document and paste it to another, less secure document. Two problems have occurred. First, the secure source content that had certain rights/security applied to it has gone to a clipboard used for temporary storage before initiating the paste, without any security. It is possible for malicious browser scripts to steal plain-text information present on the clipboard. Second, when the user pastes the content into a destination document, the destination document may have no security or less security than the source document.
A similar situation occurs when a user opens a secure document and chooses to export it to a different format, or perform a “local save as”. The content, which had certain rights/security applied to it, has gone to a destination that may not have any (or may have different) rights/security mechanisms associated with it.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for securing transfer of secure content to a destination.